As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
New reviews are posted daily, but to search for earlier reviews please click on the Mystery People link below and select 'reviews' from the welcome page. This will display an alphabetic option for you to find the review you would like to read

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Monday, 29 April 2013

The USA,
1802. In Europe the Napoleonic wars are raging with Britain
and France pitted against
each othe: not the concern of the fledgling democracy with its capital Washington only recently
founded. Yet European politics are extending their tentacles across the
Atlantic to the new state which wishes to expand across the Mississippi
and into the Louisiana
Territories, nominally
still Spanish but acquired by the French under a secret treaty two years
previously. What do the French want in return?Could it be that they wish to install Cardinal Henry Newman, last of the
Stuart line and brother to Bonnie Prince Charlie, as a puppet king in the USA who will
lead that country into the European wars on the side of the French?

The key to the conspiracy is in New Orleans and it is
there that Lawyer Macleod arrives. Although Macleod is a Bostonian, his father
was a Highland Jacobite who had lost everything after the ‘45 Rising and had
sought refuge in the States. Macleod has not forgiven the British for the
wrongs done to his family and as a Catholic and a fluent French speaker would
be an ideal choice to find out what exactly the French are up to in New Orleans. Except that
Macleod does not wish to go and being of a stubborn nature refuses to do so. So
the shadowy and secretive Office of Internal and International Information
(precursor of the CIA) in the person of the mysterious and sinister Cedric
Bentley sets Macleod up so that he has no choice but to go. In New Orleans he meets the beautiful Marie de
Valois and through her learns the truth about the conspiracy. Meanwhile the
British have also sent as agent to New
Orleans the seductive Madame de Metz (in reality Molly
O’Hara). Before long Macleod and Marie find they are engaged in a deadly game
of cat-and-mouse in which no-one can be sure who is friend and who is foe.

Another Small Kingdom has a highly complex and convoluted plot which provides a
penetrating insight into the history of the United States at the beginning of
the nineteenth century.

-------

Reviewer: Radmila May

Other books by the same author (2013,
2014): A Union Not Blessed, The
Eagle Turns, Never an Empire, Winston’s Witch.

James
Green was educated by the Vincentian Fathers at Bishop Ullathorne
Gammar School
, Coventry. He
left school at sixteen and, after working as coal-miner, farm-worker,
motor-cycle courier and building labourer, he went to St. Mary's College,
Twickenham and qualified as a teacher. During his teaching career Jim acquired,
by part-time study, an Open University B.A. and a research M.A. in Education.
He studied, again part-time and for three years, for a Ph.D. in Education at Leicester University but, in 1983, the school where
he was head teacher was completely destroyed by an arson attack and the final
write-up of the research for the Doctorate was postponed, as it turned out,
indefinitely. In 1997 Jim left teaching to become a full-time writer and
published magazine articles and books on travel. He then began writing the
first of what was to become the Jimmy Costello series, Bad Catholics, which in
2009 was short-listed for a CWA Dagger. Over the years Jim has been the author
of academic texts and reference works but now concentrates on adult novels and
is currently writing the Freedom to Espionage series which chronicles through
fiction, but based on actual historical events and characters, the rise of the
American Intelligence Service culminating in the establishment in 1947 of the
CIA. The first in the five-book series, Another Small Kingdom, was published by
Accent Press in August 2012 and the second, A Union Not Blessed, will be
published in April 2013. Jim has also been invited to become one of the
Traverse 50, an international group of writers new to the theatre, invited to
work with the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh for one year as part of the
celebration the theatre's 50th birthday.

Saturday, 27 April 2013

This is the true story of the handsome, suave
master spy Dmitri Bystrolyotov who spied for the Soviet
Union in the inter-war years. Born in 1901, his mother was of
aristocratic descent but with feminist views which led her to have an
illegitimate child as a gesture against the rigidly conformist society of the
time in which class distinctions were legally enforceable. His father was a
member of the Tolstoy family but Dmitri never knew him and after his early
childhood saw little ofhis mother, the
Tolstoy family arranging for him to live with a foster family and for his
education. But the upheavals caused by World War I and even more the 1917
Bolshevik revolution changes his life from one of privilege to one of extreme
poverty while his experiences influence his political views, and in order to
escape the chaos caused by the conflict between the White and Red Armies he
escapes to Turkey where he is at first utterly destitute. His circumstances
improve slightly and when he makes his way to Prague he eventually comes to the attention
of the OGPU (the then name for the Soviet secret police) who recruit him as a
spy. His life changes absolutely; he becomes not just a spy but a master spy,
one of the most successful in Europe, stealing military secrets from Nazi
Germany, Fascist Italy and Britain, often employing seduction of embassy staff.
But the strains of his lifestyle, which could involve adopting several identities
in one day, and a series of catastrophic personal relationships, begin to
affect his already frail personality. He returns to Moscow - a mistake since Stalin’s terrible
show trials were just beginning. Like so many others who dedicated their lives
to their political and patriotic ideals he is arrested on false charges,
tortured, and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in the Gulag. Unusually
he survives but the account of those years, derived from a record he kept at
the time, is harrowing in the extreme. Even after his eventual release, life is
difficult but with the help of his devoted wife, whom he met in the Gulag,
heachieves a measure of happiness in
his old age until his death in 1975.

The author
of this book is about the only person who could have written it. Emil Draitser,
himself Russian, met Dmitri once when the latter was an old man. Due to the
still repressive nature of the Soviet regime, he did not tackle his subject
until he himself had left the USSR
and was well established in the United
States. By this time, Russia was presenting
in various books and films a sanitised version of Dmitri as being entirely
motivated by socialist patriotism, ignoring the more questionable aspects of
his activities and passing over his maltreatment by the government he had
served so devotedly and his eventual disillusionment with not only Stalin but
Lenin and the vast edifice of state repression under which so many people had
suffered. With the aid of the vast amount of materials unearthed from various
archives, Draitser has told a compelling story of a brave, complex, sensitive
and flawed man. A must for all those interested in twentieth century history.

-----

Reviewer: Radmila May

Emil Draiter was
born in Odessa, Ukraine, Emil Draitser has
published both fiction and nonfiction since 1964. His work appeared in leading
Soviet journals (Youth, Literary Gazette, and Crocodile) under his pen name
"Emil Abramov." He began his writing career as a freelancer
contributing satirical articles for Soviet newspapers and magazines.
Eventually, he was blacklisted for criticizing an important official, prompting
him to leave for the United
States. He immigrated to Los Angeles, where he earned a Ph.D. in
Russian literature from UCLA. In 1986, he took a job at Hunter
College in New York City, where he continues to teach.
Besides twelve books of artistic and scholarly prose, Emil Draitser's essays
and short stories have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Partisan
Review, North American Review, Prism International, and many other American and
Canadian periodicals. His fiction has also appeared in Russian, Polish, and
Israeli journals.

Friday, 26 April 2013

Six Years is a thriller,
a love story and a page-turner with plenty of action. Most of Coben’s
stand-alone novels use a mystery in the main protagonists past, unresolved or a
misunderstanding of events.

This book is told in the first person. Jake Fisher meets Natalie Avery at a
remote artists retreat, they fall in love and spend three months together. Jake
is devastated when Natalie ends the relationship and within days marries
another man. Natalie makes Jake promise leave her and her new husband alone and
never contact them again, heartbroken he agrees.

Six years later Jake is a college professor. He has never recovered from the
loss his one and only love but keeps his promise not to try and contact Natalie
again. But when he reads that her husband has died, Jake attends the funeral in
the hope of meeting Natalie again. He is stunned to see that the widow is not
Natalie and has 2 teenage children. The mystery begins. Jake will not give up,
he slowly uncovers a web of lies and deceit. He is an ordinary man caught
up in extraordinary events. It turns out that everything he thought he knew was
wrong or twisted in a complex plot that keeps you reading right up to the end.

I
don’t want to say too much and ruin the book, but all the plot points are there
for you to follow. Read and enjoy.

-------

Reviewer: Sue Lord

Earlier books in the Myron Bolitar
series in order: Deal Breaker, Drop Shot,
Fade Away, Back Spin, One False Move, The Final Detail, Darkest Fear, Promise
Me, Long Lost

Harlan Coben was
the first ever author to win all three major crime awards in the US. He is now
global bestseller with his mix of powerful stand-alone thrillers and Myron
Bolitar crime novels. He has appeared in the bestseller lists of The Times, the
New York Times, Le Monde, Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He
currently lives in New Jersey
with his wife and four children.

Sue Lord originally studied Fine Art and Art History, her MA
is in Creative Writing. She now, revues, teaches, mentors and script doctors.
She lives in central London and Cornwall. Her favourite pastime is gardening.

Thursday, 25 April 2013

A new Ruso novel by Ruth Downie
is a long-awaited treat, albeit one available for UK readers only from on-line
booksellers, at least for the time being.

For an established fan of the series, Semper
Fidelis is up there with the best of them; for a newcomer, possibly seeking
to supplement Lindsey Davis’s visits to ancient Rome in the company of Falco, it stands
sufficiently alone to be enjoyed for itself, and also whets the appetite for
the previous four.

For the benefit of those newcomers:
Gaius Petreius Ruso is a doctor with the Roman army of occupation in Britannia,
during the second century AD, some time after Julius Caesar came to, saw and
conquered what later became the British Isles. In the previous four episodes in
the series, having accidentally, and somewhat reluctantly, reinvented himself
as an investigator, he variously abandoned his medical career, visited several
parts of Britannia, left the army, and took a trip home to Gaul to sort out his
rather demanding family. He also acquired a British slave, Darlughdacha of the
Corionotate (Tilla for short), a woman with a mind of her own, who became his
housekeeper and later his wife.

This time around, he is back in the
army, has returned to Britannia, and is once again practising medicine.
Carrying out a review of the medical facilities at the fort at Eboracum, he
learns that the British recruits to the Twentieth Legion think they are cursed,
following a series of deaths and serious injuries in dubious circumstances. He
makes some alarming discoveries, which culminate in the discovery of a body.

After that it’s downhill all the way
for poor old Ruso. Downie charts his and Tilla’s adventures with her customary
deft wit and a lot of humour. She has a nimble hand with her characters, both
major and minor. Ruso himself is a satisfying mix of self-assurance in the
hospital ward and total bafflement when faced with a mystery to solve. Tilla is
capable and feisty, but her determination to help her husband out of trouble
invariably backfires.

A couple more familiar faces pop up:
Valens, Ruso’s charming, ambitious friend and Metellus the devious security
chief both have a part to play. And then there’s Hadrian, the man-of-the-people
emperor, and Sabina his spoilt wife; and a whole cast of officers and soldiers
and their women, each very much an individual.

It all makes for a rich tapestry, with
a huge amount of historical research woven in with such a light hand that you
hardly notice you’re being educated as well as entertained. The secret of good
historical fiction is not necessarily to ensure every detail is absolutely
accurate – an impossible task anyway – but to persuade the reader that this is
how it could have happened. I have no idea whether the Emperor Hadrian’s
ship was almost wrecked and forced to come ashore at somewhere that equates to Hull, or whether his wife
was a gullible, selfish snob, but I’m quite happy to suspend disbelief of both
these things in the context of Downie’s narrative. And she certainly includes
enough sound common sense to convince me that she knows what she’s talking
about: details like the small boys who are the inevitable consequence of silly
girls hanging around the garrison, for instance.

Whether or not you’re a fan of
historical fiction, Ruth Downie offers a lot to enjoy in this latest Ruso
adventure. Me, I can hardly wait for the next one.

-------

Reviewer
Lynne Patrick

Ruth Downie left
university with an English degree and a plan to get married and live happily
ever after. She is still working on it. In the meantime she is also the New
York Times bestselling author of a mystery series featuring Roman doctor Gaius
Petreius Ruso. This is her fifth book. The four currently available are:
Medicus (published as Medicus/Ruso and
the Disappearing Dancing Girls in the UK
and Australia)Terra Incognita (Ruso and the Demented Doctor) Persona
non Grata (Ruso and the Root of All
Evils) Caveat Emptor (Ruso and the River of Darkness)Ruth is not the RS Downie who writes real medical textbooks. Absolutely
none of the medical advice in the Ruso books should be followed. Roman and
Greek doctors were very wise about many things but they were also known to
prescribe donkey dung and boiled cockroaches.

Find out more at www.rsdownie.co.uk

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen,
and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but
never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher
for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now
burgeoning.

She
lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about
half of them crime fiction.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Six Cambridge
graduates are drawn to the City of London
and the world of finance. Wild and beautiful Bridget and Cityboy Steve Jones,
who tells most of the story, are brokers at the German bank Geldlust, where
dumpy Rachel also once worked but who now, after marriage and children resulted
in her losing her job, is working for the Financial Services Authority (which
polices the banks), a distinct comedown. John, possibly autistic/Aspergers, is
a not very successful fund manager with a sideline in drug dealing while Colum
is an extraordinarily successful hedge fund manager but is also a ‘chubby,
disease-ridden degenerate … who sought out excess in everything especially …
drugs, money and sex.’ Even the idealistic anti-capitalistic Fergus, Bridget’s
lover,is working as a financial
journalist albeit for The Guardian. Then Bridget is sacked and during
the following drunken, drug-soaked weekend falls to her death from the balcony
of her penthouse flat. Her friends are devastated by the tragedy and, blaming
her death on Geldlust, hatch a plan to bring Geldlust down and enrich
themselves at the same time. Set ablaze by adrenalin and fuelled by drink,
drugs, debauchery, dishonesty and dysfunctional personalities, they proceed to
do just that. But it also appears that Bridget was not alone during that
weekend; someone was with her, but who, and was that person responsible for her
death?

This is a
rollicking good read, great fun and excellently written, despite the deplorable
lifestyle not just of the main characters but just about everyone else. But it
is also a cautionary tale. The complete amorality of the City is like a giant
black hole, sucking in and then destroying everyone who becomes involved.
Beware one thing, however: all the characters are phenomenally foul-mouthed: if
you don’t like that sort of thing . . . you have been warned!

------

Reviewer: Radmila May

Other books
by Geraint Anderson: Cityboy, Just Business.

Geraint Anderson, 38, son of
Labour peer Baron Anderson of Swansea, was the investment banker who in 2008
broke the City’s “code of silence” and exposed dodgy dealings in the world of
banking, telling all in his book Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile using his
pseudonym Cityboy

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

The damaged cop with demons to battle and a difficult personal life is
a recurring theme in crime fiction, and one which finds its way into this first
outing for A D Garrett.

Kate
Simms is a newly promoted DCI with a past which sidelined her for several years
and has left her with a lot to prove to her senior officers now she’s back in
the mainstream. Nick Fennimore is a consulting forensic pathologist who carries
ghosts from his own past around with him. And he and Simms have history.

Kate
is tasked to draw a line under a series of drug-related deaths regarded as
small-time by the police hierarchy; with Nick’s clandestine help she finds a
linking factor. Then evidence starts to fall into her lap a little too easily,
and she begins to wonder if there’s more going on than meets the eye.

There
is, of course, and A D Garrett weaves a cast of intriguing bad guys, a raft of
forensic detail and a background of police politics into a gripping
rollercoaster of a tale which ranks among the best police procedurals I’ve read
in years.

Then
again, from a crime writer with nine highly regarded novels under her belt, or
a high-profile professor of forensics who has worked on cases such as Madeleine
McCann’s disappearance, Millie Dowler’s murder and the Soham killings, you’d
expect no less. A D Garrett is both of these; the name is a pseudonym for the
writing partnership of Margaret Murphy and Professor Dave Barclay.

Structurally
the plot is well-nigh perfect. A couple of times I thought I’d caught them
attempting something which doesn’t work in fiction, only to find, a chapter or
two later, that I’d been sold a skilful dummy. At one point, a few dozen pages
from the end, I laid the book down thinking, there, they’ve hit rock bottom,
now the only way is up – and next time I picked it up the story swooped down
into an even deeper pit.

There’s
a lot of forensic detail, rightly so, since the narrative relies heavily on it,
and once in a while it gets pretty technical. But just when Fennimore gets a
little too carried away by science-speak and the lay mind threatens to glaze
over, Simms cuts to the chase and it’s all summed up in a few concise and
totally comprehensible words.

Simms
and Fennimore don’t work in isolation, of course; a whole cast of other
characters, major and minor, move through the action, almost none of them
wholly good or bad whichever side they’re on – and every single one evinces
that sense that they go on living when they walk off the page. The locations,
too, from police HQ to squalid crime scenes via massage parlour, hotel room and
Simms’s home, have the ring of truth; and Greater Manchester in the sleet
really is as dismal and comfortless as it’s portrayed; been there, done that!

If
this book isn’t meant as the first of a series, both publisher and author
should consider it seriously. When I finished it I wanted more. The story is
wrapped up, the bad are caught and the good rewarded, but tantalizing loose threads
are left dangling, questions left unanswered about both major and minor
characters, laying down oodles of potential for the future.

Let’s
hope Murphy and Barclay stay friends.

------

Reviewer: Lynne
Patrick

A D Garrett is the pseudonym for Margaret Murphy and Professor
Dave Barclay’s writing collaboration.

Margaret Murphy has
written nine psychological thrillers – both stand-alone and police series. Her
work has been published in the UK
and the USA, and in
translation across Europe, receiving accolades from broadsheets and tabloid
newspapers alike, as well as starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly and Booklist
in the USA.Her novels have been shortlisted for the
First Blood critics’ award for crime fiction, and the Crime Writers’ Association
(CWA) Dagger in the Library; she was the joint winner of the 2012 CWA Short
Story Dagger. Margaret is founder of Murder Squad, a touring group of crime
writers, and in 2009-10 she was Chair of the CWA. She was RLF Writing Fellow in
Liverpool and Chester
from 2008-2011, and has tutored creative writing at Masters level, as well as
presenting talks and workshops in creative writing for library groups and
literature festivals. She has been a countryside ranger, science teacher and
dyslexia specialist, and her lifelong passion for science is reflected in her
painstaking research for her novels. Everyone Lies is her first
collaborative work with forensic scientist Prof. Dave Barclay, under the
pseudonym A.D. Garrett.

Professor Dave Barclay is a world renowned forensics expert and Senior
Lecturer in Forensic Science at Robert
Gordon University,
Aberdeen.
Professor Barclay has worked on some of Britain's highest profile murder
cases. He is also a former head of physical evidence for the UK National Crime
and Operations Faculty, where he was involved in reviewing more than 200 murder
investigations, cold case reviews and inquiries into alleged miscarriages of
justice, including the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the Omagh bombing, the World's
End murders in Edinburgh, and the Milly Dowler and Soham murders. His extensive
experience also led him into becoming an adviser for the BBC television series
'Waking the Dead' and more recently, the Channel Four documentary, Dispatches,
invited Prof Barclay to Praia da Luz, Portugal to review the Portuguese
police investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen,
and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but
never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher
for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now
burgeoning.

She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house
groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

Monday, 22 April 2013

Joanna Stafford,
past trainee nun and current aspiring tapestry entrepreneur is caught up in a
chain of events, which puts her in danger of losing her head.

It is the time of Henry VIII.Jane Seymour is dead and the king is looking for a forth wife, whilst
continuing his dissolution of the monestaries and persecutions of anyone who he
feels may threaten his hold on the crown of England.Joanna's uncle, the Duke of Buckingham, has
already fallen under the axe of Henry's insecurity and so any of her family is
potentially in danger.Joanna, having
already tasted imprisonment in the Tower, does not help her plight by being a
fervent opponent of Henry's religious policies and getting caught up in several
dubious plots.

As a young girl Joanna was taken to a nun who had visions and gave
her the first part of a prophecy which indicates that she may be instrumental
in overturning Henry's reign of persecution.The story explores her journey to get the other two parts of the vision
and find some meaning from it.Along the
way she finds love, friendship, trouble and sadness as well as cementing her faith.She also gets a wealthy patron for her
tapestries.

This is an amazing book which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it got me
looking up historical facts from 1538 when it was set.All the characters including the rather
devious Bishop of Winchester are well drawn and fleshed out throughout the
narrative and the reader is dragged through Joanna's emotional highs and lows
while she explores how she is going to survive her prophecies and restore
England to what she believes is the the true faith.

A brilliant read, and certainly one which will get me looking out
for future exploits of Joanna Staffford and any other works from Nancy Bilyeau.

-----

Reviewer: Amanda Brown

Nancy Bilyeau
Nancy Bilyeau has worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling
Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Ladies Home Journal.
She is currently the executive editor of DuJour magazine. Her
screenplays have placed in several prominent industry competitions. Two scripts
reached the semi-finalist round of the Nicholl Fellowships of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Her
screenplay "Zenobia" placed with the American Zoetrope competition,
and "Loving Marys" reached the finalist stage of Scriptapalooza. A
native of the Midwest, she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan. The Crown is her
first novel.
Some earlier milestones: In 1661, Nancy's
ancestor, Pierre Billiou, emigrated from France
to what was then New Amsterdam when he and his
family sailed on the St. Jean de Baptiste to escape persecution for their
Protestant beliefs. Pierre built the first stone
house on Staten Island and is considered the
borough's founder. His little white house is on the national register of
historic homes and is still standing to this day.
Nancy lives in New York City with her husband and two
children.

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

This is a compelling book in which the main character,
Keisha Ceylon, is a con artist whoplays
psychic for people looking for missing family members.Whilst this may not seem a very sympathetic
character to feel empathy with, you start to like Keisha as she gets
unwittingly dragged into a case which is more disturbing than the missing
persons she normally pretends to "feel".

Trying to find
the wife of a seemingly upset husband turns into a game of survival, as she
starts to find that there is more to the situation than a simple missing
persons case.What starts off as a
possibility to help her pay the rent and support her lazy boyfriend becomes a
nightmare involving murder, death, cover up and past clients as well as
inflaming poor relations with the local police.

As ever with
Linwood Barclay's writing this is a nicely paced well crafted story which does
not give the reader obvious pointers to how the storyline will move forward
from one chapter to the next.From the
start the narrative keeps you guessing, who is murderer, what is going to
happen next, how will she get out of that?Whilst you start off not really convinced that you should be on the side
of the con artist, Keisha, by the end you are hoping that she will get through
on top. Unfortunately as she is not truly psychic she doesn't know how it ends
either!

A really
interesting and compelling read.-----Reviewer: Amanda Brown

Linwood
Barclaywas born in Connecticut.Hestarted
his journalism career in 1977 at the Peterborough Examiner, moved on to a small
Oakville paper in 1979, and then to the Toronto Star in 1981 where he was,
successively, assistant city editor, news editor, chief copy editor and Life
section editor. He lives in Toronto
withhis wife, Neetha and two children.

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

I could simply have
written a one word review for this book: BRILLIANT!!!
But that wouldn’t really be enough. Over the years, I’ve
read a very large number of thrillers, and enjoyed nearly all of them.
But very very rarely have I’ve been as absolutely gripped as I was with
this novel ... to the point of hardly daring to turn the page for fear of
the next ratcheting up of the tension, the next terrifying episode which is
going to thwart hero Kai Tanaka in his desperate bid to save not just his
family but the lives of a million or more people on the island of Hawaii.

A plane inexplicably explodes and nose-dives into the Pacific
ocean. Why? I don’t want to dilute any of the
thrilling story by saying why this has happened. Suffice it to say that
it is linked to a seismic disturbance whic h triggers the most massive
catastrophe. Tsunami waves of over three hundred feet threaten Honolulu and everyone
anywhere near. This is not your ordinary tusanami, either, this is a mega-tsunami,
so huge that it is almost unimaginable. How can anyone survive the impact
when it hits?

Morrison has clearly done a huge amount of research to produce this truly breathtaking
thriller. Far-fetched? The author’s completely
believable hypothesis is what makes it all so completely, terrifyingly
gripping.

Nor do I want to preview what the results are. I can only say
that this is the fastest-paced, most heart-thumping thriller I’ve ever
read. By the time I'd reached the end, my nerves had been stretched
almost beyond breaking point. Even strong drink couldn't calm me down.
DO NOT MISS THIS ONE! ------Reviewer: Susan Moody

Boyd Morrison. After earning a BS in mechanical engineering from Rice University,
Boyd worked for NASA and tested Xbox gamers forMicrodsoft.As a professional
actor, he has appeared in commercials and films and in stage plays such as Noises
Off, Barefoot in the Park, and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Currently he is working on his next Tyler Locke book.

http://www.boydmorrison.com/

Susan Moodywas born in Oxford is the principal nom de plumeof Susan
Elizabeth Donaldson, née Horwood, a British novelist best known for her
suspense novels. She is a former Chairman of the Crime Writer's Association,
served as World President of the International Association of Crime Writers,
and was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. Susan Moody has given
numerous courses on writing crime fiction and continues to teach creative
writing in England, France, Australia,
the USA and Denmark.In addition to her many stand alone books,
Susan has written two series, on featuring PI Penny
Wanawake (seven books) and a series of six books featuring bridge player Cassie
Swan.

Saturday, 13 April 2013

whois
a writer and journalist.
His first crime novel was published in 2011 as Frozen Out in the UK, Frozen Assets in the US.
It is set in present-day Iceland
in the months leading up to the collapse of the banks. 2012 saw the publication
of the second novel in the series. Cold Comfort is set in an Iceland coming
to terms with the recession.
The latest book is Chilled to the Bone,
set in post-recession Iceland
and the depths of winter.

.

QYou mention somewhere that you have always
been a big reader. Is reading as necessary to you now as it was before you
started writing?

ADefinitely, probably even more so. There’s less time for reading
these days, so I’m probably more selective than I used to be and rarely embark
on a book unless I’m fairly sure it’s going to be a good one. I’m also reading
a little more widely these days and I’ve found that the Kindle my daughter gave
me has helped discover all sorts of things that I’d probably not otherwise have
found.

QYou
say on your blog that you ‘have always seen fiction as a mug’s game.’ Do you
stand by that opinion now that you are a successful fiction writer, and, if so,
why have you chosen to write fiction?

AI
don’t see myself as a successful fiction writer. I’m still a beginner.
I wanted to see if I could do it. I had written some non-fiction stuff before
and have a day job as a journalist (no, nothing even remotely glamorous or
sensational), and saw fiction as a challenge, and I like a challenge. I’m still
not sure if it’s a mug’s game. To be quite brutal about it, the odds against
getting published to start with are steep, and the odds against staying
published for a mid-list writer aren’t much better. On the other hand, dreaming
up murder and intrigue is a great way to spend your days.

QYou wrote about your first novel, ‘Frozen
Out’ that ‘there was just too much material not to do it.’Do you write for enjoyment, or do you somehow
feel driven to do it?

AIf
I didn’t get a buzz from writing, I wouldn’t do it, so the prime mover is
definitely my own enjoyment. I think I’d been leading up to it for years,
almost unconsciously collecting ideas, scenes and characters. Although I was
already deep in Frozen Out at the time, it was the Crash in 2008 that
crystallised everything as the lunacy of what had been going on just spilled
out.
Writing fiction was also a release. I used to work for an editor with an
incredibly rigid style. Everything in the magazine had to look the same and any
kind of creative flair was firmly discouraged. So Frozen Out was partly born of
that frustration of having to write that turgid, formulaic stuff. I later found
out that one of my colleagues was doing the same thing; going home and writing
fiction after spending all day writing for an editor who was firmly anchored in
1978.

QYou have put some amazing photographs online
that you took in Iceland.
How difficult was it to leave such a beautiful place?

AIt was a wrench to leave, as I have
some roots there that go deep. I met my wife there, two of our children were
born in Iceland,
but probably the right thing to do at the time.
Iceland
isn’t an easy place to live in, especially as we didn’t live in comfortable
urban Reykjavík. It’s at the edge of the world and although it is undeniably
beautiful, somehow that passes you by when your car is buried past the roof in
a snowdrift or when there are only a few short hours of daylight and the sun
doesn’t actually rise at all.

Q Q You
have lived in at least two countries.Does the displacement of settling in a new place add to your ability to
feel detached as a writer?

AThe expression ‘Glöggt er gests augað’ means that the visitor has
the sharper eye. I find it much easier to write about Iceland when
I’m not there, as if the distance puts things better into perspective.
I read the papers online and listen to ‘Steam’ radio at home, so that keeps me
in touch, and there’s rarely a day when I don’t speak to someone in Iceland (skype
is a godsend). I have a far clearer idea of what’s going on in Icelandic
politics than what’s going on in Westminster.
It’s also important to spend time there and there’s no substitute for speaking
to people face-to-face. I don’t do a great deal of proper research, but I find
it’s important to spend time there, with Steam radio on in the background, read
the papers, chat to the fishermen at the quay, taxi drivers, the coppers and
minor criminals I know, listen to what people are saying in the Co-op or the
bank, take in the internecine local politics and the petty feuds going on, all
that kind of stuff – and then write about it later.

QOn your blog you claim that ‘developing a
kevlar-lined rhino skin is an essential part of any writer’s kit.’I think we all know what you mean, but can
you explain why you said that?

AIt’s
uncomfortable when someone who gave up after forty pages gives your book a
laconic one star, or likes it but still gave it a solitary star because it was
delayed in the post.
I get a good few complaints about the complex names and how difficult they are
to cope with. The books are set in Iceland and people there aren’t
called Jim and Sally. The names aren’t what we are used to and there’s no
getting around that, regardless of my efforts to keep them as accessible when I
could easily have made them so much more complex.
Anyhow, I decided to give a character in Chilled to the Bone a name so awkward
that I defy any non-Icelander to pronounce it. But I did give him a suitably
short nickname, so the real name only has to appear once or twice. I had
expected my editor to ask for it to be changed, but she didn’t say anything, so
it stayed in.

QHow do you account for the gloomy atmosphere
of Nordic Crime Fiction? Does it reflect the society? Do you think different
countries have different generic characteristics and if so, why?

AThere
are differences. Icelanders are different to the other Nordic people as it’s an
island nation and there’s a real frontier mentality, which it shares to an
extent with Norway.
Maybe it’s because both have a past as colonies, while Sweden and Denmark were trading nations with
aspirations of empire?
There are Nordic stereotypes that sometimes ring true. Danes have an irreverent
sense of humour that the other Nordic nations don’t have in quite such
abundance. I’d best not be too forthright about the national stereotypes
– but they all make fun of each other.
It’s not just the crime fiction that’s gloomy. Literature does get taken very
seriously and maybe that has spilled over into their crime fiction. In reality
they are no more gloomy than we Brits are and in some ways they are less hung
up and serious. They do know how to have a party when they put their minds to
it. So, no. The image of gloom and misery that comes across in much Nordic
fiction isn’t representative of the way they are.

QIs your writing governed by plot or
character?

ACharacter,
definitely. I’ve tried plotting things in detail in advance, but it didn’t work
for me. I get halfway through careful plans, and then an idea pops up that’s
too good to not use, and suddenly the plan has been lost. So I work with a
fairly loose set of waypoints and that seems to work better.

QYou wrote that one of your villains ‘was a
whole load of fun to write’.It is certainly
my experience that the bad guys are much more fun to write than the good guys.
Is this a problem for you when writing a series with a protagonist on the right
side of the moral compass?

AIt’s starting to become more of a problem now. I’m having to
make more of a conscious effort to write
more Gunna, mostly by giving the poor lady a hard time. She gets the shock of
her life in Chilled to the Bone. I’m around
halfway through the first draft of what should be the fourth Gunna book, but so far she has
hardly made an appearance, which is a little worrying.

QGood titles are so hard to think of. Your
first novel was called Frozen Out in the UK
and Frozen Assets in the US.
Why did the title change?Were you
involved in the decision, and which of the titles do you prefer and why?

AOriginally the
book was called Frozen Assets. Then one of the Icelandic banksters published a
memoir with the same title, so I asked my publisher if they wanted to change
it. They said not to worry about it. But at the last minute they decided to
change it, and I was told when the decision had been made. By then, the US publisher
was too far gone to make the same change. So the book appeared under two
titles, which has caused some confusion. With the benefit of hindsight, they
were entirely right. Frozen Out is a better title, although it bears no
relevance to the subject matter.

QFrozen Out is set in a small community. How
important was that social setting to you? Could you imagine setting a similar
book in a large metropolis?

AI
wanted a setting that wasn’t all Reykjavík, as the countryside is very
different in so many ways. I lived in a couple of smaller towns in Iceland, one
with a population of around 700, so that’s the side of the country that I know
best. The e-book that published in January (Winterlude) is set partly in the
north of Iceland,
not far from where I used to live, but I’m not sure I would have got away with
that so easily in a full-length novel.

QWhen I started writing my first series I
deliberately chose a female protagonist because I wasn’t confident about
writing from a male perspective. With a spin off series I’m having to do just
that. Why did you choose a female protagonist for your series?

AI
hadn’t deliberately chosen to use a female protagonist, but Gunna just came to
life and demanded attention, and seemed like another challenge. She was the
sidekick in the original draft, but I twigged after a while that the original
lead character was a hopeless collection of clichés. So I discarded him in
favour of the far more interesting Gunna.

About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.